Thats not bad at all, man that c6 is gonna look sharp on the street

 

i wouldn't put much credit to that article, it also states the C6 will go on with the same 350hp base engine, which one can say is "close" to the 400hp we are expecting...

 

Reread... it says no such thing.

 

Interestingly, it is $44000 USD in the States. If you do the conversion it translates to roughly $58000 CDN. But here it is MSRP of $69,000!

Won't it be much profitable to cross the border, buy the car there (from a friend/relative) and bring it here? That's a savings of $10,000 plus taxes (15% here in Ontario).

Or, in retrospect, $69000 here translates into 52,550.57 USD. Not bad, eh?

 

Not bad. Still several dozen thousand more than I could afford, but oh well.

 

A far bigger question is what will the final specifications be? Will your $44K Corvette targa be the performance equivilent of the current Z06? What exactly comes as standard?

It should be obvious that GM saved a buck or two by deleting the pop-up headlights, but it makes me wonder what other clever "decontenting" took place?

 

Look, I've probably been the most vocal here against losing the concealed headlamps... but I would hardly call it "decontenting"... they went in a different styling direction.

The 1997 C5 had, what?, 30% (or something like that) fewer parts than the 1996 C4... would you call the C5 "decontented?"

 

Substituting clear plastic for the complexity of concealed headlamps is a definite savings in cost and weight. Originally it was a way of hiding some boring sealed beams, but most current designs like to show off those complex modern projectors. Still, the change makes the car cheaper to build - and alot more ordinary.

The C4 vs. C5 parts count issue isn't a very fair comparison. Between hydroforming for frame components and the new-for-'97 LS-1, the C5 was always going to have lower parts count than its predecessor. However, deleting features like the clam-shell hood certainly helped in terms of cost.

 

I pretty much agree with everything you are saying here.... however, "cheaper to build" does not have to equal "decontented".

 

1) Amen. I grant thee a cookie.

2) It's lighter. Lighter can mean less material weight = less cost. Neat how that works, huh?

3) Decontented my a$$.

 

Besides, those lights on the C6 are new projector-type HID lights.

Hardly a "decontented" replacement.

 

can but not necessarily does. Gold vs. steel. Neat how that works? You bet!
These headlights are HID, so they are not as cheap as may seem.

I feel you have some rough price figures?

 

Steel is less dense than Gold (steel is lighter)

Steel vs. Aluminum would have been a better analogy.

 

guionM covered the HID headlights for C6, and as for losing the clam-shell hood...I think overall it was a good move. Pieces align better from the factory, personally I thought access to everything under the hood was a bigger PITA, and perhaps the biggest reason why Chevy ditched it was insurance claims. Those hoods were REDICULOUSLY expensive to replace.

 

Same with the old Viper hoods, the hood alone was something like $11,000 to replace.